It has been a disastrous season for Melbourne Victory.
The A-League’s biggest club, by far, has failed on the pitch and struggled for good publicity off it, the board have made bad decisions, and worst of all, cross-city rivals Heart have surpassed the club on the pitch – playing better football, more effectively, with a younger side. The season will be confirmed as a failure this evening when results will almost certainly confirm that the club has failed to make the finals. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that despite the above, the signing of a superstar and the continued presence of the leagues best import, have ensured that crowds have been up this season, and the club has been hard to beat (only the top two sides have lost fewer games). The unbalanced squad and the issues of coach selection for this season have been argued over and over but the only thing that matters now is ‘where do we go from here?’
This week, key personnel from Victory met with supporters to discuss the future and confirmed that the club is still the most viable in the competition, membership figures are still good, and Victory should break even this financial year. In relation to playing matters, this summer will see a major cleanout of talent and regeneration of the playing squad with a focus on youth – there’s already talking of a major raid on Gold Coast United’s promising collection of youngsters.
There was also the strongest indication yet that Irish coach Jim Magilton will be retained for next season, with special attention being paid to his knowledge of football. Little attention was paid to the fact that the Irishman will have no problem standing up to Kevin Muscat, unlike the unassuming Mehmet Durakovic – an issue that is surely key to the short term future of the club.
It would appear that everything is in place for next season to be one of the most exciting yet at Victory, with a coach who has a record of playing good football over in England and working with his own squad of players – we’ve seen what a difference that made for Ange Postecoglou up in Brisbane. We can expect Victory to push for the top. With Melbourne Heart’s young squad only likely to improve, perhaps Melbourne teams can hope for domination in the A-League next season? Perhaps?
